All is Black As Coal

All is Black As Coal

Indian Holocaust My father`s Life and time- SEVENTY TWO

Palash Biswas




I had a opportunity to work as a journalist in coalfields during 1980 to 1984 based in Dhanbad, then situated in Bihar and now in Jharkhand. I witnessed the merciless exploitation of the natural resource by Coal India aligned with Coal Mifia. I knew personally all the devs and devils. I also joined cocktail parties in Koylanagar and in different area offices scattered all over Jharkhand and West Bengal. I investigated major coal mines accidents technically joining classes in Indian School of Mines. DGMS and Coal India officials declared then that all mines are unsafe and mining is hazardous when I asked the justification of all enquiry resuts expressed as God`s fault. DGMS was in full stregth then and I had to see it disintegrate. I also watched the Jharkhand agitation led jointly by AK Roy, Shibu Soren and Vinod Bihari Mahto and the growing influence of coal maifia in politics. I invetigated the Giridih illegal mines accident in 1981 followed by Chapapur in Eastern coalfields. No body was found in Giridih despite hundreds being trapped. I visited dozens of villages around to get clue, could not get one. In Chapapur the police recovered three bodies but relatives could not be located. The illegal mining in coalfields have a very systematic network and have officials and politicians on different level on its pay role. Thus, illegal mining may not be stopped in India, however may be the grim the alarm.

I always noted serious violation of mining act and regulations , saftey measures and I exposed them in detail in my reports published in Dainik AWaz daily. Official never go underground. Coal agents and mining officers know nothing goes all over. Coal India and its subsidiaries run on with Budgetary allocations and fantastic PR Job. Mining Sardar run the mining. Survey reports are not taken into consideration and we face the incident like Chasnala.

I have been watching subsidence and coal fire in Jharia coal fields for decades. The government of India could not initiate any action to protect the people or the environmernt after so many years of Coal mines nationalisation and allowed generously to continue the LOOT.

Raniganj as well as Jharia were declared eviction areas in early eighties. Were the polity and political parties sleeping. We have seen the deaths in Gangtuli recently. What action was taken?

A blast in an illegal coal mine in Asansol has killed at least two, with many more missing. The area in West Bengal is constantly plagued with the menace of illegal mining, reported CNBC-TV18.The mine was abandoned in the early 1960s and the pit was sealed with a concrete slab two years ago after a baby fell into it, but it wasn’t filled with sand, as it should have been.
Following the blasts, which were caused by pent-up methane gas inside the mine, these cracks appeared on the National Highway two along a 700-metre stretch. Thanks to the explosions that caused the cracks, which are still widening, the administration has finally taken note of the ominous situation here. Question is how deep it would dig into the problem.Cracks have appeared on a 700-metre stretch of the National Highway 2 after a series of explosions took place in an abandoned coal mine near Asansol. The cause for the explosions was pent-up methane gas.The mine in which the explosion happened was abandoned in the 1960s. Abandoned mines were not sealed as per norms. As a result, these unsealed mines get filled with methane gas.The explosion was followed by earthquake-like tremors. One of the after-effects is that water in wells is still boiling. It is being speculated that all those years of illegal mining have taken a toll.The fire was noticed inside the abandoned mines. Passenger trains are still plying on the affected track though goods trains have been stopped.

West Bengal Thursday sought the army's assistance to construct a new road to divert traffic as a coalmine explosion earlier this week left cracks on an important national highway.

'First we have to find a new alignment in the area so that vehicles could reach Durgapur (in Burdwan district in West Bengal) from Dhanbad (in Jharkhand) avoiding Asansol (also in Burdwan). That alignment has more or less been finalised and the military will help us. A temporary bridge has to be built,' Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya told reporters at state secretariat Writers' Buildings Thursday.

'We have spoken with the army authorities at Panagrah and after a temporary bridge is made, a diversion road would be in place,' he said.

'Coal India and GSI (Geological Survey of India) experts have reached the spot to ascertain the exact nature of the subsidence, the gas layer and the situation. The expert committee will submit its report in another 24 hours and also say if the railway track nearby is in danger,' Bhattacharya said.

Asansol in the heart of Bengal's coal belt is a hotbed of illegal mining. It's been going on for ages, and large parts of Asansol have been caving in every now and then. But never has the damage been as extensive as this time. The nearby highway, which connects Kolkata with Delhi, might have to be abandoned, and the Bengal government has requested the army to help build a parallel road. But the damage could have been more extensive.

People of Asansol continue to live dangerously as illegal mining continues unabated along this highway. Stamping it out is nearly impossible because thousands live on coal mined from these pits, and those who control these mines have strong political backing.

Alarm rings on illegal mining as a series of devastating landslides and quakes could hit eastern India, killing hundreds of thousands, unless rampant illegal mining is stopped, a petitioner has told the Supreme Court.The court gave the director-general, mines safety, three months to file a report on this after the public interest litigation contended that the destruction would be a national disaster ?worse than the tsunami?.Petitioner Haradhan Roy, former CPM Lok Sabha member from Raniganj, said illegal mining that flouts all safety norms could turn the eastern region ? particularly the coalfields of Raniganj, Jharia, Asansol and Dhanbad ? into a ?firebowl, endangering not only people but the entire vegetation.He submitted the report of the parliamentary sub-committee on coal (part of the standing committee on energy), which maintains that the situation may lead to one of the greatest economic disasters in the country.

Major railways like grand chord and national highways, which are the lifelines of the country, besides other traffic network, shall be destroyed, warns the report, titled Preliminary Material on Environmental Measures and Subsidence Control in Mines. Lakhs of people shall face danger due to the after-effects of the fire in the long run, virtually turning these coalfields into a firebowl, it adds.

Tapash Ray and L.C. Agrawala, the counsels for Roy, told the three-judge bench of Justices N. Santosh Hegde, S.B. Sinha and Ashok Mathur at the May 5 hearing that the flagrant breach of mine safety laws was a violation of the fundamental rights of eastern India’s populace.

The petition said a group of consultants had suggested a ban on new construction over areas declared unsafe, but it was being ignored.

He sought a direction from the court to the Centre to state on affidavit the decisions it had taken to avert a disaster, the reports it had placed before Parliament on this, and the nature of the work carried out in the eastern coal belts.In fact, by 2000 CIL had a poor image throughout the coal industry. Three major subsidiaries including Eastern Coalfields Ltd., Central Coalfields Ltd., and Bharat Coking Coal Ltd., were in financial trouble. The company was also not meeting safety standards when compared with other international coal mining companies. During 2001 the Indian government scrutinized CIL, its subsidiaries, and its management. Allegations ranged from misuse of company finances to illegal mining for profit. CIL's record of project completion also came under fire. Since nationalization, only 298 out of 401 government sanctioned projects were completed and more than 70 had been delayed.

Statesman published the news story on October 10th, 2006:

` As many as 80,000 families living near the Jharia mine in Dhanbad coal belt face relocation. Officials say the coalfield area is, in effect, sitting on a “giant fireball deep inside the earth,” after they discovered at least six underground leaks of toxic fumes. Experts fear massive underground explosions followed by subsidence occuring at any moment.Already more than 500 residents of Bhuiyan Patti basti in the Jharia coal mine area have been forced to live in makeshift tents close to the nearby railway siding. The Coking and Coal Limited (BCCL) authorities, which manages most coal mines in the region, have ordered a complete evacuation of Bhuiyan Patti basti.

The BCCL authorities have begun efforts to douse the underground flames and toxic emissions by filling the leakage points with earth. However, this method could increase the risk of explosion. All mining work in the LUJ pithead of the BCCL’s North Tisra project has been suspended for an indefinite period.
“The villagers first spotted the emissions late last month, close to the Bhuiyan Patti basti and around 50 yards from the LUJ pithead. It is the same case with the CT pithead, where reports have come in about toxic fume emissions. It is a very alarming situation and there is always the risk of underground blasts. Efforts are on to douse the flames,” a senior BCCL officer said.
On 6 September, 54 miners died in a major underground blast at the Bhatdih colliery in the Jharia coal fields. The incident in the 17th incline of the Nagda section of the mines is one of the country’s worst mining disasters. Senior BCCL officials, including Lodna section general manager Mr SP Singh, North Tisra Project official Mr RK Nigam, Ginagora project official Mr M Mullick and BCCL regional safety officer Mr S Ghosh, are on site to take stock of the situation. None of them wish to repeat the mistakes committed before the Bhatdih colliery disaster. In a related development, other senior BCCL officials blame the Centre for what they claim is an indifferent attitude to giving concrete shape to the proposed Jharia Action Plan.


“The issue of rehabilitating more than 80,000 families from the Jharia coal mines area is still pending and all these families face the threat of underground explosions and fire,” a senior Eastern Coalfields Ltd official said. He said in a jointly formulated proposal, Central Coalfields Limited (CCL), ECL and the BCCL had earmarked Rs 7,500 crores for the Action Plan.

In addition, he said that a Rs 61-crore pilot project has been initiated but residents have been reluctant to leave their homes. “The Union Cabinet is still to give its clearance to the Action Plan, scheduled to be completed by 2012. Without completion of the Jharia Action Plan, we will be unable to avert major disasters in the future,” he said.’


As CIL neared the end of 2001, its future remained uncertain. The Ministry of Coal was considering merging the seven coal producing subsidiaries of CIL into one unit in order to save nearly Rs 1,000-crore per year in tax related costs. Not knowing what its future would hold, CIL pledged to focus on meeting demand, raising productivity of its coal mining operations, and restoring its subsidiaries to profitability.

Coal India Ltd. (CIL), a holding company, is wholly owned by the Government of India through the Department of Coal and the Ministry of Mines and Minerals. CIL is responsible for 88 percent of coal output in India. In 1999, production was 256.5 million tons of raw coal, up from 250.6 million tons the previous year. However, like many state-owned concerns, CIL's financial performance has been generally poor. During the financial year 2000-2001, CIL reported a loss of Rs 1,400-crore--a crore is equal to 10 million. At the start of the new millennium, the company was under scrutiny by the Indian government for its performance and business practices. Coal provides more than 67 percent of India's energy requirements. However, India's per capita energy consumption is among the lowest in the world. India has vast coal reserves, and these can be mined cheaply, although the coal is generally of poor quality and has a high ash content. In 1998, India's total coal reserves were estimated at 200 billion tons, of which over 69 billion tons were proven reserves. The bulk of India's coal reserves are in the states of Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, and Madhya Pradesh. Due to the structure of the coal mining industry in India, CIL's role is a major one, and its performance and operations very much reflect the policies and priorities of the government of India.

Shanxi Province, located in coal-rich North China,` will employ an aerial camera in an effort to tackle illegal mining. From January, the province will use an unmanned aircraft with a camera attached to monitor particular areas. Once identified, illegal mines will be immediately closed. Shanxi began a campaign against illegal mining last year and has since closed 5000 illegal mines. However, the province has seen five major accidents since October this year, four of those occuring in illegal mines.

Unauthorized mines are not uncommon in mineral-rich regions of poorer countries, and India is no exception. Whether they constitute merely a law and order problem including safety issues, or there are important social and economic questions involved has yet to be thrashed out. The mining industry, at regional, national and international levels, is ambivalent towards such mining, tending to draw attention away from their informal nature to the size factor.
These are called peoples' mines and they serve a significant purpose in local economies. The article's thesis is that peasant communities are trying to claim back a portion of the local resources lost to them through appropriation by mining companies thus re-asserting their traditional rights to local mineral resources. In conclusion, the need for a new moral economy for mining regions is stressed: an economy in which local communities will play a powerful role.

The ownership of land in Raniganj region had passed on from local adivasis` to agricultural castes long before coal mining caught on as a popular business enterprise with the zamindars. Yet, the Santhals and a low caste called Bauris, who later became known to colonial administrators as 'traditional coal cutters of Raniganj' (Paterson 1910), continued to remain closely attached to their lost land by leaving the mines for agriculture-related work. This encouraged the mine-owners at one time to bring in outside labour, who later came to dominate the formal industrial labour force. Naturally, when the agricultural sector decayed, local inhabitants were forced to seek jobs elsewhere. Where will they go in this single industry region? We shall explore these connections in the course of this paper.
In spite of its specificities, Raniganj may give us a clue to understanding the larger scenario, or the various urgent issues that need to be brought into the open in the context of mineral resource management. It may help us to understand:
· the role of 'community' in mining;
· if mining constitutes a 'curse' instead of the resource per se;
· the way development has shaped the third world;
· the way local communities enforce their traditional rights over the land in the absence of a participatory process; and
· how a formal and an informal sector continually supplement and complement each other in mining.

In 1994, India amended its Coal Mines Nationalization Act allowing foreign companies to hold a 51 percent stake in Indian coal mines. The amendment also enabled foreign and private power companies to operate their own coal mines--since 1973, the government only allowed steel plants to run captive mines in the private sector. Indian officials hoped that the relaxed laws would encourage investment in Indian coal mining, an industry whose demand was growing a rapid clip.At the same time, the import duty on non-coking coal fell from 85 to 35 percent. The reduction enticed coal-consuming industries to seek out imports, whose coal had a higher calorific value and lower ash content than Indian mined coal. With the threat of increased imports cutting into CIL's production, the company began to petition the government to allow it to fix its coal prices as well as its production targets.


By the late 1990s, the Indian government was fearful that CIL and the entire mining industry would not be able to keep up with the rising demand for coal. India was known for its large amount of coal reserves, but in the past had been unable to keep pace with the demand. In 1997, the country began reforming the industry to further encourage investment and exploration and set plans in motion to deregulate pricing and distribution in the industry. It also requested $1 billion from the World Bank to restructure CIL's operations. The loan was used to purchase new machinery and to build new coal handling plants.


During that time period CIL was also feeling increased pressure from international competition. Major coal producing countries including Australia, South Africa, Indonesia, and Columbia began eyeing the lucrative Indian market as a potential gold mine for their low cost coal. As such, CIL management pleaded with its subsidiaries to cut costs and increase production. Profits, gross sales turnover, and production fell in 1999.

India is now the world's third largest coal producer. Within India, coal mining is a highly organized activity; it is institutionalized from beginning to end, with engineering colleges churning out mining experts and technical schools producing on-job specialists, government departments taking decisions on behalf of collieries, and public sector research institutes housing brilliant scientific research teams, and above all a tight bureaucratic control. There is no dearth of material on environmental impacts of mining (see Dhar 1990; Dhar and Thakur 1995 among others for a representative sample of research in these lines).
The state ownership of coal mining in India is important because it can put a significant amount of control over the volatile nature of mineral sector revenues and prevent booms and slumps from occurring at intervals. Such ownership can effectively modify the negative roles of Multi National Corporations (see early work by experts such as Girvan 1971; Evans 1975) Mines in developing countries tend to function as economic enclaves - transmitting a strong growth stimulus to distant metropolitan regions but having only modest local developmental impacts (Hirschman 1977). Rothermund and Wadhwa in their famous study (1978) noted this trait in Raniganj-Jharia coal bearing region and called Raniganj coalbelt a 'secondary enclave' to the primary one in Calcutta metropolis. The enclave nature has not really altered in the postcolonial period and has intensified during the last three decades under state ownership of the mining industry.
The appalling neglect of social development and well being in Indian mining regions sits uncomfortably next to a large body of legislation, including environmental legislation7. The commitment to environmental issues in the mining regions does not include the human element in what is constructed as 'the environment'. Thus the existing legislation suffers from narrow definitions, loopholes and a lack of direction to the agency responsible for implementing the laws. In the area of enforcement, the gap between intention and reality is even greater.
For all natural resources, their physicality as external resources that can be seen, traced on a map, touched and felt makes it easier for planners and development practitioners to define the situation as an objective one and prescribe technical solutions (Grove-White 1993). This is true of forests, and also of minerals such as coal in this case. A mineral resource obviously exists as a physical reality. This physicality of minerals leads to their scientific and quantitative construction. This physical image of the resource often introduces a certain construction of history and economy. It is common that the more natural the object appears, the less obvious the discursive construction is. This has happened in the case of mineral resources. Though minerals occur as natural phenomena, we must remember that they are also constructed by the political economic discourses that describe them.
Sharing the Same Space
Formal-informal coexistence
The honeycombed seam of Samdi is just the tip of the iceberg. Travel around the collieries, get off the main roads, talk to local villagers and keep your eyes open. You will get a feel for the enormous 'underground' activity that goes on in the area. Mr Haradhan Roy, the veteran leader of Colliery Mazdoor Sabha India (CMSI) says that about one million tons of coal is produced every year by these collieries in Raniganj alone. The total annual national production from such mining in India would not be less than 20 millions tons. In 2001 in Raniganj there were at least 33 identified sites of unauthorized mining. Some of these mines are open cast whereas others are underground. In addition, several legal mines even have an illegal counterpart. This is one aspect of the coexistence of both activities as in the case of Samdi Sangramgarh, which I have described before. There are also cases like Bansra where 44 local brick kilns purchase the illegal coal mined from the 7 ft upper layer, whereas the 18-20 ft thick lower layer is worked by ECL. The important fact is that besides individual mines on private land or on old abandoned mines or on working mines, pilferage of coal from working mines in the dark, or from the coal dump, is a common feature. The space sharing thus goes far beyond the obvious physical aspects. There are close economic linkages too; both activities are integrally related to each other as in case of other informal activities. There are different types of coal mining in Raniganj, and because the informal mines are less visible or illegitimate does not necessarily mean that they do not serve an economic role. They represent the functioning of a single society originating within the same historical process.
Another type of illegal mining, for example, occurs not on the leasehold land of the ECL but on the land that is owned by individuals and has coal occurring close to the surface. For any quarrying - whether fire clay or morrum - an individual has to obtain permission from the government. There are a multiplicity of laws and acts small operators have to comply with, on the basis of their low levels of technology, capital investment and small size of operation. The temptation to circumspect the laws is immense.
Whose resource is it anyway?
The formal and informal mines share their problems and often these are delicately interlinked. In Khaerbad colliery, for example, the two kinds of mining go on so close to each other that it is difficult to distinguish them. Leakage of oxygen into the underground coal seams has caused extensive mine fires in Khaerbad. Air over the entire area is thick with smoke and the ground is too hot to stand on with shoes for a significant length of time (at places the surface temperatures even at night may be higher than 650 C, as per Gangopadhyay, Lahiri-Dutt and Saha 2001). The ground has cracked in many places to let out the piled up smoke. A nearby patch of sal trees - the entire Rashulpur jungle - is desiccated due to the subsurface fire. The fire has been raging here since the mid-1980s when ECL's use of a dozer to stop illegal mining sparked it off. Mine fires due to unauthorized mining nearby have also occurred in Itapara and Begunia collieries, and in the Shankarpur colliery of Bankola area. To keep the fire under control, the mine should run and thus Jambad, previously an underground colliery, has now been turned into an open cast mine.
Questions of safety and environmental protection seem academic in such a situation. The main goal for the nationalized coal industry was 'to ensure a scientific approach to exploration and exploitation of coal deposits with due attention to safety, conservation and environmental aspects, while accelerating the production level through substantial investment' (Kumarmangalam 1973). The hierarchical order of organizations/officials/institutions meant to ensure safety includes the Directorate General of Mines Safety to Coal India Limited's own safety department; ECL's Safety Officer; each Area's (ECL's own subdivision of the mining region clubbing a few collieries together for administration) safety office (that includes representatives of each recognized trade union); and the individual mine's safety officer. In this elaborate arrangement, the question of risk perception of villagers is never mentioned, and never once it is asked why people endanger their safety to an extent of going down into a mine without the basic precautions.
Naba Mishra, a majdoor leader of a leftist trade union feels that there are four main reasons for accidents in such collieries: roof fall either at the entrance that has to be rather small or at the work face or blasting related, sidewall fall; presence of toxic gas (CO2 or carbon monoxide CO) and the lack of oxygen; fire due to breathing of oxygen; and inundation. In Mahabir colliery (a flooded mine abandoned by the ECL), local people cut coal in waist-deep water. In the abandoned mines in Kalipahari, the access to the coal seam has been cut from the side of the Damodar river. During the monsoons the raised water level prevents access to the seam, but work goes on throughout the dry season. On average, about 40-50 truckloads of coal are produced this way and much of it is purchased locally by the fuel coke traders. As a result, the illegal collieries have a rather short-life span - never over five years. The most common accident is caving in of the roof when the mine operations become deeper and bigger. The element of risk is thus more in bigger mines or older mines. Snakebites too are not uncommon.
The legal-illegal nexus is also evident in many ways. Take for example the fact that ECL still follows the conventional 'board and pillar' system of coal mining in most underground collieries. In this system of mining entire coal can never be lifted and there has to remain a significant amount of leftover coal. Added to this, neglect of proper sandstowing causes severe risks for the local built environment (Lahiri-Dutt 1999). Moreover, ECL leaves a mine as soon as a mine becomes


Asansol mine mishap: Clearing resumes
[ 16 Oct, 2001 0058hrs IST TIMES NEWS NETWORK & AGENCIES ]


asansol: fresh subsidence, measuring 10 feet, was reported at lalbandh in burdwan on monday as clearing operations restarted where an illegal mine caved in last week trapping 150 people. the road-levelling work that was stopped on sunday following water gushing from underground, resumed monday morning with 160 m of approach road being laid out to reach the mine, district magistrate manoj agarwal said. district officials said that the eastern coalfields limited and the directorate general of mines safety are meeting here to chalk out plans to finish the task at the earliest. “it will take two more days. we are considering whether to blast the site to ease work... but there is a threat of damage to houses in the vicinity,” said agarwal. the dm said ecl officials had proposed to submit to the district administration a bill of approximately rs 44 lakh that would be incurred in clearing 66,000 cubic metres of earth. “but we are not in a position to pay. the ecl should foot the bill,” agarwal said and reiterating there was no sign of life at the abandoned mine. but even as clearing operations continue, there is no end to the practice of illegal mining in the jungles of rosulpur at baraboni. bullock carts and trucks can be seen along the roads in kalipahari, sripur, bokbandhi, pariharpur areas of asansol subdivision. the accident at the abandoned ecl mine has not had any effect on the criminal activities. illegal mining resumed almost immediately after the accident. “we need stringent laws, otherwise it is impossible to stop this looting of national property,” said b.n. ramesh, sp of burdwan. he admitted that despite all efforts, illegal mining continues. he, however, passed the entire responsibility to the public sector giant ecl, saying that after the coal mines nationalisation act 1973 the cil subsidiary is solely responsible for protecting central government property. unless the ecl completely destroy the abandoned mines by filling them up, there is no way to stop illegal mining. “we have no list of abandoned or illegal mines in asansol,” ramesh said, adding that stringent measures are being taken to curb crime. all police stations have been asked to stop illegal mining and we are conducting special checking along the 173 kilometres stretch national highway, he said. a special task force formed in asansol to combat kidnappings will also assist.

In Asansol, parties turn blind eye to illegal mining


Pratim Ranjan Bose writes:

ASANSOL

The visit to Nandigram, a village under Jamuria municipality in the Asansol coal belt bordering Jharkhand, was conditional. "You will be introduced as a party from Dhanbad interested in opening a `koyla khadan' (coal mine) on my land and should behave accordingly," says Anup Bhattacharya. He is a resident of the same village and has already sold land for illegal coal mining. Photography is strictly prohibited "or else your life will be under threat."

Mr. Bhattacharya is not kidding. Such is the scale of the illegal mining and so great are the profits that no one dares to stick his neck out and oppose it. Not only that, the illegal mining has become the mainstay of the local economy in the absence of opportunities from agriculture in a barren region; so much so that both the authorities and the local political parties turn a blind eye to it, especially during election time.

Just 500 metres from the Jamuria municipality and a kilometre away from the residence of the local MLA, thousands of people are in action around 200-odd wells, which are 40-45 feet deep and five feet wide. Inside each well, about a dozen people, the poorest of the poor tribals from Jharkhand, are scooping out coal from `rat hole' tunnels at the base of the well, parallel to the ground. An equal number of locals are above ground, raising the coal in baskets through pulleys fixed on bamboo poles. The coal is loaded on bullock carts and taken to the nearby `fuel coke plants' (Star, Jaganmata, Raja, Bharat) acting as illegal godowns in and around Jamuria, from where they will be loaded on to trucks to make their journey out of the State and even to Bangladesh through the night.

There are at least 1000 such mines along a 20-km stretch in Jamuria covering Nandigram, Sankri Danga, Banamalipur, Baijayantipur, employing 25,000 people and producing close to 20,000 tonnes of coal. An even greater number of people are kept busy servicing the trade, including overseeing the mine operations, keeping accounts, arranging transport and paying off the authorities.

The daily production of coal in Jamuria, Barabani and Ranigunj (all under Asansol Parliamentary constituency) is estimated to almost equal the Eastern Coalfields' (ECL) production of 30-40,000 tonnes, generating over Rs. 5 crore a day! But more important, illegal mining offers employment opportunities to a greater number of people than the one lakh employed by Eastern Coalfields. Considering that most of the land in the area is either single crop or barren, illegal mining is therefore the mainstay of the economy at least in Ranigunj, Barabani and Jamuria. Naturally, none of the political parties dare oppose it.

"It [illegal mining] is the deciding factor in the electoral politics of Asansol. Whosoever tries to stop it will do so will pay the price," confides a Trinamool Congress leader in Asansol. The party's Parliamentary candidate, Malay Ghatak, says the CPI (M) is responsible for the state of affairs. The CPI (M) nominee and present MP, Bikash Chowdhury, says it is the Trinamool Congress in the State and the Centre's policies that are to blame for the lack of economic growth in the region.